Avoiding difficult emotions is a normal reaction.
If we’re sad, we want to be happy.
If we’re frustrated, we wish we weren’t.
If we’re disappointed, we want to feel fulfilled again.
When the blues come calling, we want to get away from this state as quickly as possible.
How do we confront these difficult emotions instead of letting them generate fear and anxiety? How do we watch them and accept that they’re a normal part of our lives?
1. Accept different emotions are normal
This seems painfully obvious but it’s worth the reminder. We can’t be happy all the time nor can we be extremely peaceful all the time.
Accepting this can be key to feeling OK and feeling satisfied. It’s all part of the ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows.
When we slowly come to accept this, we offer less resistance towards ourselves in moments of difficulty. This can actually cause these negative emotions to leave us quicker.
We’ll experience different emotions all the time. And that’s perfectly fine.
2. Greet your sadness as a friend
I first came across this idea from Toni Bernhard who recommends that we see our emotions as friends that have come to stay – usually uninvited.
Even though we may be annoyed by this in real life, we can still treat them with kindness and in turn we treat ourselves with kindness.
The idea behind this is simple: if we treat our emotions as friends, we treat ourselves with compassion. Sadness feeds off sadness. With compassion, sadness gets bored and leaves. Maybe next time he won’t stay as long!
Quiet contemplation I suppose. Maybe he’s saying hello to sadness. Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
3. Don’t order yourself around
“I shouldn’t feel sad!”
“I shouldn’t feel angry, it was a meaningless interaction!”
“I shouldn’t feel this or that – I should only feel that!”
Now imagine saying this to a child about happiness … or anything else.
Why should we feel any kind of way? We can literally just experience emotions without trying to invalidate them.
Plus if we order ourselves to stop feeling a particular way, it’s just a first class ticket to feeling sad again!
Try removing the word “should” from your sentences when talking about how you feel. Accept them and with time, it’ll leave.
(That’s why stuff like “just be happy!” is pretty meaningless or worse yet, detrimental to actually feeling happy. Who wants to be under pressure to smile!)
“I’m not a human… that’s pretty cool. I also don’t know why I’ve been included here but that’s fine.”
4. Let yourself be vulnerable
Often, a reason why we struggle to accept different emotions is because we’re trying to present ourself in a particular light. Whether that’s to our friends or family. Or towards ourselves.
But with some privacy, we can experience whatever we want.
Dismiss the “I must be strong” mindset because sadness, crying, frustration aren’t signs of weakness!
If you fall, we’ll catch you :)
And with this, we can find some peace in sadness. We don’t exhaust ourselves running away because that just means it’ll keep chasing us. Rather, we accept it’s a normal experience and most importantly:
Sadness, like all moods and emotions, are impermanent.
As always, thank you for reading!
My question for you is:
How do you handle sadness? Do you think it’s healthy?
You can follow me on Twitter and Facebook for more updates!
If you liked this post, share it with others! Advertisements If you liked this post, share it with others!
